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ZMAZZ launches to take on mobile banking in Europe and beyond

The day when we no longer have to cart around our fat wallets, jammed with credit cards and cash is fast approaching. Several smart mobile payment platforms have emerged over the past few years including Square, PayPal, Venmo and Dowalla in the U.S. making it easy to pay our friends securely and in realtime.

Today, in Europe, at The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam, Euro-Wallet has officially unveiled ZMAZZ as its new mobile banking and payments platform, enabling users to pay from any mobile phone in retail and at small medium enterprises as well as on the web and to each other. The Netherlands based ZMAZZ has already started to directly integrate its software into cash registers, payment service providers and with merchants. The result is a mobile payment platform that is completely independent from traditional banks, telephone companies and the payment card industry. ZMAZZ is also able to digitalize receipts and store them in a personal online ZMAZZ safe, giving users full control over their purchase history.

ZMAZZ strives to give back control to the consumer and the merchant by making transactions fair, social and fun. For consumers this means they are able take control over their own money, information and identity by letting them have fun whilst paying and capitalizing their own anonymous data and identity. Merchants will get free transactions and they will be empowered with new marketing tools and access to a breadth and depth of information unimaginable before.

ZMAZZ CEO Ger Rottink

To track the history of ZMAZZ, we begin in China, where the Dutch/Chinese based company Rudilian built a mobile banking and payment application in close cooperation with the Bank of China, China Mobile, and China Union Pay. The ensuing acquisition project was supported by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs through its subsidiary the EVD (in Dutch: “de Economische Voorlichtings Dienst”). In 2006, Rudilian successfully closed its pilot with 42,000 participating users. In 2008, Euro-Wallet acquired Rudilian, using its platform and experience to build its own European independent mobile banking and payment platform.

Euro-Wallet’s goal is to challenge the payment and banking environment by introducing secure mobile payments in Europe and beyond with a system suitable for any mobile phone and without additional hardware implications for merchants. Today, they’ve also launched their “Mobile Payments for Parking” service, which will first be active in two big cities in the Netherlands (Enschede and Amersfoort) on May 1st, 2011. Every month thereafter they will connect more cities, starting with the biggest ones (Amsterdam and Utrecht).

ZMAZZ CEO Ger Rottink says current mobile payment providers are charging substantial amounts to users for usage of their services. “We believe that ‘paying for payments’ is absurd. ZMAZZ Parking will allow users to park their car from any mobile phone, free of charge. With our service, users can start and stop their parking action from any mobile phone (using our app or a simple text message). This means you never have to pay more than you actually park. No registration or subscription costs.”

Today marks the start of a complete roll-out of their Mobile Payment Platform targeted for this summer. This means that by the end of 2012, everybody in the Netherlands will be able to pay for parking using ZMAZZ.